August 06, 2007

Back Toe Holds...Moooo

You guys doing all right? Yeah, buddy. All right.

Welcome from sunny Alma Center, Wisconsin home of the Cows R Us Farm. And the Hellers are students of mine you may have heard about. And today, we’re going to bring you a little lesson about backwards toeholds that I hope will help you learn and enjoy what is one of the funnest tricks in bare-footing.

All right. I’m not going to go over in a lot of detail good form on backwards other than to just quickly show you that you need to have the upper body shoulder-roll and meat-hook. You’ve got to pinch your butt out, and you’ve got to be able to look like this. Before you ever think of doing a back toehold, you have to be able to move over and ride back one-foots without diving away, without tightening up. You got to be very comfortable. Ride your back one-foots at at least five seconds, so you’re very comfortable riding the back one foot position in a relaxed manner.

Now, here’s where the tips come in to help you go from back one-foots to back toeholds.

The first step you need to do is to master this form on dry land. Next, learn the position on Puppy Paws the same way. The first real step will be to get comfortable finding where that strap is. Because at first, that strap you’re going to think is going to be somewhere here and it’s not. You’ve got to reach up. You’ve got to reach back. And you got to be able to find it. So I what I like to have students do is make sure they don’t lose the setup.

The setup for a back one-foot is the same setup for a back toehold. You move over first, transferring 80% of your weight. Create the angle in your handle, hips, and shoulders without diving away or losing your upper body form. And then as you’re searching for the handle, don’t move over or level off, because that will make you set down. So the whole time you’re searching for that strap, you got to stay angled. You got to keep your body position while finding the strap.

So what I’d like you to do is set it up and find it at first. You might be underneath it first. You might be on the outside or the other outside. But get very familiar of where that strap is. That’s why this is critical to practice everything I’m going to show you on dry land first. I’ve got some videos online of students doing back toeholds that you can watch, but this is how you’re going to practice and how you’re going to get there whether shoes are on your feet.

And here we go. Move over. Angle. Now start to find the strap.

The minute you find the strap and you get your ankle in there, not your toe, you get your ankle in there. There’s two things you want to do as soon as you get your foot in the strap. You want to arch up high with the upper body, the highest upper body you’ve ever had in bare footing combined with the “squat down low compression,” the lowest knee you’ve ever been able to have in bare footing.

So that combination is going to allow the pull of the rope to come more directly from your hips. In regular back one-foots, we want to stay somewhat bent over so the pull comes to the hips. But realize once your foot’s in the strap, you’ve got the perfect pull through your hips. So we got to transfer that position.

So here we go. Move over; turn the handle, angle, as soon as you find the strap, as soon as you get it in there, arch up, squat down, and go to fingertips on the handle all without losing this angle in the upper body. Arch up, squat down, and then bring your hands to your chest like that. The key here is not to dive away, bend over, or change that form that we worked so hard to get on the back one-foot. Here it is. I’ll show you from the other side.

Why don’t you come a little bit over here, Shannon? I want to show a little bit from this side. Or I’ll move over this way. Stick with my buddies the cows. All right. So here we go. Move over; turn the handle, so you could see my left shoulder’s higher than my right. My weight’s over my right foot. As soon as I find the strap, arch up, squat down, fingertip, and then hands up to your chest.

When you want to get the handle, you reach with your high hand first, which is the left side here is the high hand, same as foot in the strap. As soon as you get your fingers on it, start pushing your butt out back into your one-foot position, grab the handle, ride your one-foot, and then set it down gently. So you don’t come crashing out of there.

So those are my tips on how you’re going to do a great back toehold after doing a good back one-foot. I want you to practice on dry land first. I want you to practice on your Puppy Paws second. Take it on your feet on the short rope. Take it long line on the Puppy Paws, and then take it long line on your feet.

This is Lane “Dawg” Bowers coming from sunny Alma Center, Wisconsin home of this year’s Barefoot Nationals.